This invention relates to molded plastic brushes for applying mascara or the like to a user's eyelashes.
Mascara brushes of the type commonly referred to as “twisted-in-wire” brushes are well known and widely used in the cosmetics industry. A twisted-in-wire mascara brush has an axially elongated twisted wire core with a multiplicity of fibers such as bristles clamped at their midpoints in the core and extending radially outwardly therefrom; the core is constituted of two lengths of wire, which may be initially separate or may be opposed legs of a single U-shaped wire, twisted together into a helix to hold the bristles between them. Typically, the bristles are more or less uniformly distributed for at least most of the length of the brush, and the overall shape of the brush (i.e., the notional envelope defined by the tips of the bristles) has a rectilinear axis and a simple circular cross-section, being cylindrical, frustoconical, or a tandem arrangement of proximal cylindrical and distal frustoconical portions.
Although the combination of a twisted wire core and a radiating array of bristles clamped in the core provides an acceptable brush structure for uses exemplified by the application of mascara, twisted-in-wire mascara brushes have certain disadvantages. They are relatively costly, and there are only a limited number of suppliers. Moreover, a conventional twisted-wire brush offers essentially only one kind of brush profile for use both to transfer the mascara from the container to the face and to apply the mascara to the eye lashes. To enable improved application, it would be beneficial to provide mascara brushes having structures other than uniformly distributed bristle arrays with simple cylindrical and/or conical envelopes of circular cross-section; but the diversity of possible configurations of twisted-in-wire brushes is restricted by the requirement to trim the bristles in order to achieve desired shapes, and the difficulty of forming and positioning cutters to effect such trimming.
It has also been proposed heretofore to employ plastic brushes and combs as mascara applicators. Injection molded product suppliers are quite abundant, and the cost of a molded brush can be less than that of a twisted-in-wire brush. There nevertheless remains a need for designs affording or permitting enhanced functional versatility (e.g., thickening, lengthening and separation as well as delivery of mascara to the lashes).